


On Angel Babies

by ricketyjukeboxer



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Origins, Angelic Grace, Angels, Canon Compliant, Destiel - Freeform, Destiel implied, Fluffy, M/M, Resurrected!Cas, s13, season 13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 04:12:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11073813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ricketyjukeboxer/pseuds/ricketyjukeboxer
Summary: After Castiel's most recent brush with death, Dean asks him about his childhood.





	On Angel Babies

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the many adorable art works of baby!Castiel. Mostly a short, fluffy snippet of a private Cas/Dean conversation taking place sometime after Season 12. 
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr at [ricketyjukeboxer](http://ricketyjukeboxer.tumblr.com). Always happy to follow Supernatural and general nerdery blogs! I need more SPN family connections and people to fan with!

"What were you like as a kid?" 

Castiel could hear the rustle of sheets as Dean rolled onto his side. He felt a jump in his throat that tightened his shoulders and if an angel of the lord could be startled, he imagined this is what it would feel like. He'd been in Dean's room for a little while, had settled in to watching the human rest. In a past life, he'd been asked to stop such behaviors--more like ordered--but that rule had changed since his return. Lots of rules had changed since Cas had come back from the dead (the last time). 

He shifted in the hard wooden chair, thankful that he couldn't really feel the ache of his vessel's limbs, though he was aware of it--a dull buzz in the base of his brain. Things like that had been coming through more clearly to him since--since--it was always since, his existence broken up now to before and after. As far as deaths went, the last had been quick, but it had changed him more than any before it. He was still an angel, still had his grace, but there was something like a soul opening up inside of him too, something Jack had left behind with the spark of life. 

Being stabbed in the back by Lucifer wasn't the only point in his timeline that marked eras of himself. Now Dean was asking him to go back to another. Before Dean. He didn't like thinking about that. 

"I think you will be disappointed, Dean. I was not--angels were never children." He felt suddenly so 'other.' Dean's gaze from the bed grew more intense, more curious, and Cas felt the niggling concern that Dean was seeing him like a research project. 

"Come on, Cas," voice still a little rough from sleep. "Everyone has a beginning. Angel's didn't always exist. That means you were new at some point. Chuck made you, you were born. What were you like?" 

It was clear that Dean was not going to be satisfied until Cas tried to explain to him the origins of a being outside of human understanding. He wouldn't be Dean if he didn't insist and Cas wouldn't be Cas if he didn't at least try. That thought forced a smile to curl at the edges of his mouth, a slow blink as his gaze shifted to the floor to examine the space between them. It was infinite, wasn't it, that space. But since his death, it felt smaller. 

"I was always me..." Cas stutter started and fizzled immediately. 

"Bullshit. You've changed about a million times in the years I've known you. That's hardly any of your--what--millions of years of existence? You haven't always been you." Dean was sitting up in bed now, knees pulled up, forearms leaned casually on the rise of the sheets that still covered the lower half of his body. His hair was messed up, crushed at different angles that Cas wanted to reach out and make sense of, organize, smooth. It made his fingers itch with an acute sense of desire, like little magnets had been embedded there just waiting to find their particular brand of metal to want. Dean's hair, apparently. 

Cas sighed and leaned forward, elbows going to his own knees, a more upright version of Dean's posture, mirroring him. "You and Sam changed me." You more, he added to himself. 

Flopping backward on the bed in frustrated defeat, Dean disappeared briefly into the sink of pillows around him. "Is this like fight club? First rule of halo patrol daycare is that you don't talk about halo patrol daycare?" Dean didn't seem to want to focus on the Winchester influence at the moment.

"All right. I was a wee angel with tiny wings and cherub cheeks. I got into trouble and never listened to Gabriel who liked to watch over us because he was our big brother and no one gets into trouble like baby angels." Deadpan, even though Dean's head shot up, expression wide-eyed and it made Cas want to squeeze him. He would have liked this version of his beginnings to be true because it would give them both a touchstone of sameness: big brothers, impishness, the kind of youth that only humans know. "Dean…" he murmured gently, revealing his lie, much to his own chagrin. 

"Fuck you," Dean groused and stuffed a pillow over his head to block out any more adorable lies. 

When Cas removed the pillow, he found the profile of Dean's nose, green eyes, and freckles. His need to be human, to have always been human, shuddered so violently within him that he could feel the quake of his grace faltering. "You've seen a sunrise." 

"Of course," Dean replied, still frowning. 

"That's what I was like." 

Even though the physical space between them had narrowed, Cas feared that an even larger expanse would open between them. He had started out a being of light. Something that Dean could not hear or see without agony or death. When he was young, he began behind the shadow of non-existence, steadily growing into a being, revealing slowly what had somehow always been there, just hidden. That was the nature of angels, eternal and yet not. So very different from God's later creation.

He watched the human face before him process the metaphor and his own heart, his human heart, ached with an anticipated rejection. 

The lines of Dean's face softened. "Oh." 

It was everything infuriating about Dean in one syllable and Cas stood firmly locked to the spot next to the bed, feeling his knees press against the edge of the mattress, eyes clamped shut in frustration. Oh? ...Oh? Before death and after death, yet still stuck in this limbo of admission and dismissal. Maybe things hadn't changed so much since the last time. 

Cas felt Dean's warm fingers curl into his hand and the sensation caused his eyes to fling wide. To see it happen only confirmed the spark of joy igniting the fragmented beginnings of his soul. 

"That wasn't rocket science, Sunshine. Not so hard to explain," Dean smirked and Cas knew that another era of his life had just begun. Before and after Dean had taken his hand.


End file.
